‘Why don’t they charge?’ Chel demanded. The smoke was rising thick over the engine now, and after their initial shock its operators had resumed their activities. ‘Why are they moving so slowly?’

Tarfel’s eyes took in the whole of the plateau. ‘They’re waiting to see what confronts them, I imagine, Vedren.’

Bells rang out over the plateau, thick and dolorous, mournful as the grave. Someone had picked an apposite signal for the church’s armies. At the outer wings of their ranks, two infantry formations began to move. They marched forward, weapons aloft, whatever dirge they sung lost beneath wind and cavalry. Around the engine, confessors emerged, ringing it with a bristling band of spears.

Ghiz dropped an arm and the lancers charged. They roared forward, their sound at once a deafening cacophony. They rode with speed and precision that defied the heavy mail that cloaked both riders and beasts, moving as a sinuous wave, rumbling off the bridge and onto the plateau in a rising cloud of blinding dust. Panicked, the engine operators fired, and a half-loaded volley streaked away into the crystal sky. Dozens of black arrows screamed through the air, fizzing and spiralling over the gorge. Some found their mark, dark news from the lookout towers around the city relayed swiftly to its Keeper.

The confessors around the engine dug in behind their spears, a wall of gleaming steel between the riders and the dark engine. At either flank, the church infantry had picked up speed. Chel recognized a pennant, crudely affixed beneath their standard crook. The Company of Stars, Fest’s mercenary company, absorbed and redeployed as a mere cog of the church’s machinery. He wondered if Fest was among them.

The lancers bore down on the engine, then at the last moment they veered, pulling wide instead of crashing into them. They rode past the engine and its startled defenders, circling beyond, riding toward the plateau’s edge as they curved. The confessors swung with them, turning to face, entirely oblivious to the crossbowmen who had reached the bridge’s end, armed with the first batch of augmented weapons delivered from Kosh’s workshop.

The first volley of bolts cut into the engine’s defenders like a rain of teeth, dropping screaming confessors as they punched into unarmoured backs. The men scuttled for the safety of the engine as the second volley slammed against its iron shield, but on its far side they met only the oncoming lancers, wheeled and charging again from the flank. The remaining men were crushed against the engine’s side, their spears abandoned, their formation shattered.

‘Yes!’ Chel whispered. ‘Now destroy it!’

The lancers disengaged and rallied, reforming in a square behind the engine. Some of their number took a moment longer to rejoin the formation, returning from the back of the engine with spears and sabres bloodied. Its operators had ceased to operate.